Benefits of Music, How Music Transforms

The Power and Benefits of Music

The beauty and power of music is that it makes us feel emotions. Powerful music makes us feel powerful, sad music makes us feel sad, and music that is tied to something that happened to us in the past evokes old memories. Only a few notes are needed, and in a second, we remember a whole setting around the experience, our past memories unroll before us in cinema. To me, it always seems like, just for a second, I can rewind time and be there physically in that instant.

It is only in recent times that research proves what we feel. Music isn’t just entertainment. It is something else altogether and affects us in many layers of thought, emotion, and physicality. Music really is different. Primative almost.

Music and Brain Development in Children

If you work with children in real life, music is a powerful way to support kids who need assistance with cognitive and emotional needs. Music builds stronger connections in the visual, auditory, and motor regions of the brain; and there are very few activities that do this.

Additionally, children who are exposed to music early in life develop deeper and wider connections in the corpus callosum, the bridge between the brain’s two hemispheres. In practical terms, that means that they develop stronger spatial reasoning, better reading and language skills and more complex logic pathways. It doesn’t take much exposure to build lasting benefits, even two years of music lessons leads to stronger executive functioning

Music as Medicine: Stroke and Neurological Recovery

Music is a powerful tool to help patients who have had a left-brain stroke leaving the right side of the brain mostly intact.

Stroke damage is normally localized, so the point of therapy is to allow the undamaged side of the brain to pick up the slack. This pattern allows patients to use the right side of the brain to draw on memories of music, melody, rhythm, and the emotional experience of their past music tastes. This is one reason that music therapy is often used in nursing homes.

The same principle helps Parkinson’s patients. Thearapist can time movement to a steady beat which reduces motor freezing. Rhythm then helps the patient to retrain their gait, stride length, and walking velocity. For people with other traumatic brain injury, music serves a similar purpose, helping to rebuild and reconnect damaged neural pathways over time.

Music and Physical Health

Modern life is stressful, and music can help us all. Slow, calming music lowers cortisol. listening to soothing music before bed increases alpha wave activity in the brain, which can improve sleep quality. That’s not a small thing for anyone who struggles with insomnia.

Almost 60% of adults suffer from insomnia, and that stretches back to children too. It is well worth a try to avoid often ineffective or dangerous sleeping aids.

On the other side of daily life, music makes exercise more enjoyable. Rhythm sets the pace and reduces perceived effort. For moderate-intensity exercise 120 to 140 BPM is the sweet spot.

Music and Pain Management

Music can be used as a non-invasive tool for pain management. Pain isn’t purely physical, perception plays a big role in how intensely we experience pain. Music triggers endorphin release and as mentioned above reduces cortisol, which distracts from both pain and anxiety.

Hospitals use music therapy for pre-surgical patients, during active childbirth, for chronic pain management, and even in the NICU, where premature babies show greater weight gain and better medical outcomes when music is part of their care. It even makes going to the dentist more tolerable.

Music and Mental Health

Music influences neurotransmitters release, and music therapy is a recognized treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and a range of other mental health conditions.

Slower music slows the nervous system and supports deep relaxation, particularly helpful for patients with depression, PTSD, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. It’s one of the more accessible tools available, which matters when we are addressing symptoms and conditions that are resistant to medicine.

Music and Memory Support for Dementia Patients

For patients with dementia, music is an anchor to memory and improves quality of life.

Project Alive Inside pairs Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes with student volunteers and devices with a personalized playlists built around their age and musical history.

Patients who are typically non-responsive become animated, conversational, and emotionally present when they hear music they know. It works because musical memory is stored primarily in the cerebellum and parts of the frontal cortex, areas that are preserved longer in dementia patients than the regions that hold other types of memory.

This is a video clip from the organization Alive Inside, located in Mt. Vernon, New York. They provide music therapy to individuals with dementia living in nursing homes in collaboration with local youth.